For homeless men, a new shelter and new rules

Kate Santich, Orlando Sentinel

When the Coalition for the Homeless opens its new $5 million men's shelter sometime next year, it will boast at least two things the current, aging men's pavilion does not: Actual beds and air conditioning.

But the 250-bed facility will be a "historic" departure from the old in more ways than the physical.

"We're no longer going to take guys in, feed them, give them a place to sleep and push them back out on the street in the morning," said Brent Trotter, the nonprofit's president and CEO. "We're finally going to acknowledge the truth that if you do the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome, it's insanity. And we're going to stop the insanity."

While the homeless coalition has long had programs for women and families that offer counseling, job training, life-skills classes and individual case management, most single men at the shelter are simply warehoused each night, sleeping on the floor before being fed breakfast and turned out each dawn. Typically, they spend their days on the streets of downtown Orlando or Parramore or in the public library, looking for a place to rest or eat or sometimes panhandle.

Some have existed this way for years.

But the new men's shelter — an attractive, two-story facility that will be open 24 hours a day — will screen all incoming men for substance abuse, mental illness, medical problems and other issues. And then it will try to get them help.

There will be a 40-bed unit just for veterans — a population currently unaddressed by the coalition and most other homeless programs. There will be separate units for the elderly and men with disabilities, another first for the coalition. An expanded, intensive substance-abuse treatment program will house up to 50 residents.

Men with mental and physical illnesses may be referred to the Health Care Center for the Homeless or Lakeside Behavioral Healthcare. And men who simply need some guidance, training in a new job and a place to call home while they get on their feet will finally have it.

"I can go out there right now and introduce you to guys who are entirely capable of that," Trotter said. "Some of them have been bus drivers. Some have construction skills. They've got abilities; they just don't have a place to work in this economy."

As it is, these men — who will fill the largest unit of the new shelter — have no one at the coalition to help them look for work or seek job training. They have nowhere even to take a shower during the day or a place to store clothing they would want to wear to a job interview. And they have no one but themselves to be accountable to.

Construction on the new shelter is expected to start late this fall and last nine months. The building itself is being bankrolled by Community Block Development Grants — federal money channeled through the City of Orlando and Orange County.

But what remains unclear is who will pay for the additional staffing needed, or even how much staffing will be needed. The coalition is hoping to partner with other local agencies to cover the increase.

And one of the biggest challenges will be how to deal with men who aren't veterans or substance abusers or elderly or disabled — men who may merely want a bed, a meal and no part of change. For them, there will be only a small introductory unit with what you might call a "tough love" policy. It will have 30 to 70 beds, depending on the need on any given day.

The men there will have a certain window of opportunity, maybe 60 to 90 days, to comply with the program. If they don't, they'll have to leave.

Cathy Jackson, executive director of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, said she is hopeful the number will be small. In the past three months, her organization has helped bring case managers to the current men's shelter to work with the chronically homeless. The counselors interview the men to determine if they're eligible for veterans' benefits, pensions, senior housing, disability or other aid. Then the workers help them apply.

"The reality is that of the 250 or so men staying in the pavilion on any given night, the vast majority has always needed and wanted intensive intervention," Jackson said. "They just didn't have the opportunity or resources to look for it."

But she and others do worry about the fraction who will promise anything at the outset merely to get in the door. Those men, they say, may take far longer than three months to even show effort.

"You can't just say: 'Be gone you chronically homeless people who are resistant to change,' " said Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "You've got to have a safety net. You've got to have a place to eat and sleep …. The best and first step should be to get them into permanent housing" — an apartment or home of their own, as opposed to a shelter.

That approach — sometimes called the "Housing First" model — is based on the idea that simply taking away the struggle to survive on the street will solve a lot of problems. After all, advocates say, the taxpayers already subsidize homelessness in ways that may not be obvious — higher police and jail costs, unreimbursed hospital bills and court fees, for instance.

But Trotter said Orlando simply doesn't have the resources for a housing-first approach, and that case management has been a successful tool for helping homeless people throughout the nation, something Donovan agrees with.

"We're infants in this compared to some cities," Trotter said. "We don't know yet how all of this will work out. But we do know that, because of our limited space, you don't get to just stay here and soak up services. You're going to have to paint or get off the ladder."